The High Flyer

Description

'The Vision of Elena Silves was almost too precociously good. The High Flyer rolls back the doors of the Shakespearian bunker to reveal the arsenal within. It's a very good novel' - William Boyd Thomas Wavery is the new Consul General at Abyla on the tip of North Africa. A career diplomat, Wavery was once a high flyer, but an affair with a younger woman has dashed his dreams of ambassadorship. He arrives in Abyla with his wife suing for divorce, his passport stolen by a Gibraltarian ape and precious little enthusiasm for the task ahead. His one hope of redemption is a visit from his new love.

Nicholas Shakespeare was born in 1957. The son of a diplomat, much of his youth was spent in the Far East and South America. His novels have been translated into twenty languages. They include The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, Snowleg and The Dancer Upstairs, which was chosen by the American Libraries Association in 1997 as the year's best novel, and in 2001 was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich. His most recent novels are Secrets of the Sea and Inheritance. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.

He tells a story like an angel... Wonderful * Observer * A deeply satisfying book. I feel quite exceptionally inclined to read it all over again -- Rosemary Stoyle * Literary Review * Shakespeare has completed a richly detailed, remarkably complete imaginary world * The Times * His lyricism is all his own and he raises his lovers to a plateau of passion where Greene never ventured * Sunday Telegraph * Wavery's story has a lyric simplicity and an emotional subtlety that are moving, involving and beautifully observed * Independent *